Monday, May 08, 2006

I spent most of Saturday cutting down trees in Diana and her neighbors' backyards. The reason we were cutting down trees (a rarity in New York) in backyards (double rarity) was that these trees were mulberry trees - a.k.a. "trash trees." All last summer they produced these awful berries in numbers that were truly staggering. I mean, we're talking a two-inch thick carpet of rotting, stinky, staining berries that attracted flies and all manner of bug from miles (or at least it seemed) away.

So this weekend, after a death row reprieve of a couple of weeks due to rain, the mulberrys came down - with a crash. We had a pruner chainsaw on a long pole, a reciprocating saw to dispose of the "bodies," a very tall extension ladder, some rope, and a makeshift grappling hook - a garden implement tied onto the end of the rope. We went up top of the ladder, trimmed down, and only really ran into problems with the last major chunk of the biggest tree.

We tried everything: we cut, we grappled, we pulled, we hit - from all angles. Eventually with a big heave-ho in the right direction the beast came crashing down, only to lodge itself on the severed stump of its other fork. It's a wonder none of us got hit, broke an arm, etc. We split up the remaining pieces with the pole chainsaw and quit to watch the Kentucky Derby, which my roommate and one of the guys cutting trees with us won - a five-dollar bet on Barbaro, which went off at 6-to-1.